Guerillas In Our Midst

by Claire Peate

  For sale, excellent one bed ground floor flat with own section of garden. Would suit first time buyer or investor looking for a foothold in this up and coming neighbourhood.

  And there on my computer screen at work was her living room, looking tidier than I’d ever seen it, except I could see her Jigsaw handbag peeking out from behind the Habitat sofa. The fireplace that we’d spent a weekend stripping and blacking. The kitchen, with the broken cabinets – looking straight for once. The bedroom spookily clothes-free. The bathroom retiled: when had she done that?

  An excellent opportunity to purchase a flat of this nature: we are anticipating high demand and interested parties should act quickly.

  I clicked on to the next property and was into the chandeliers again, and then I sat back in my chair and took deep breaths. My hands were shaking and my throat felt tight. How could she leave Brockley? How could my Beth leave me? A minute more and I’d calmed down enough to lessen the shaking and had decided that I had to pull myself together. Going to pieces over Beth’s exile was not going to get me anywhere, so even if I didn’t feel like I was coping, then I should pretend that I was coping and maybe that would kickstart me actually coping. Wasn’t that what Amanda’s latest magazine offering had said?

  Heart now beating as if I really was on a Blyton online-style adventure … Five go to Wikipedia … I scanned the home page for the hidden grey icon that was a link to the secret society. The office strip-lights were dull and grey and the computer monitor was dirty. It took a lot of time positioning myself at various angles to try to identify where a hidden grey image might actually be hidden. And then I spotted it: a barely visible shaded icon of a trowel, slightly darker than the background of the web page. I would never have seen it if I wasn’t specifically looking for it.

  I clicked.

  PASSWORD?

  Capappab

  Capabbil

  Cpabailty

  Captbilty

  Damn it! My hands were shaking so much I could barely type. I took a deep breath and tried again.

  Capability

  Finally.

  PERMISSION GRANTED. WELCOME.

  I had reached the homepage for the Brockley Spades! Excitedly I scanned down the page.

  Mission Statement.

  Current Projects.

  Past Projects.

  Blog.

  I clicked on Mission Statement once more slightly deflated that the secret society had such a thing: real adventures never started with a mission statement. “The Brockley Spades exists to materially improve the neighbourhood of Brockley, within the Borough of Lewisham, through planting and maintaining its open spaces.” I clicked back to the home page.

  The list of past projects was more interesting: as I scanned down the roll I realised that I’d noticed a lot of the society’s work without knowing it. It had just sort of happened. One day the traffic island near the garage was a mess, the next day it was covered in rose bushes. The school had windowboxes, Brockley Cross had hanging baskets. At the time I’d barely given it another thought. But now…

  The blog took all afternoon to read, which was fortunate as there was nothing else I wanted to do that day. It was full of messages like awesome man and Gr8 work on the gardens!!! Any blogs from Eustace were formal and grammatically correct without a LOL or WTF insight. There were a handful of messages posted from Guy, including I saw as I scrolled down a message to me!

  “Edda – if you’re checking the blog out – I’ll call round at yours 11.45pm on the 4th for the station dig.”

  Guy had written to me! On a secret webpage. Belonging to a secret society I was now part of! Guy had posted a message just for me! I read his words and every atom of my being exploded with joy.

  A man from Education looked up from his desk. Briefly.

  Ten

  “What is that smell?” Beth was wandering around my kitchen. It was the evening before my day of interviewing and she had come round to wish me good luck and “catch up on all your secret society gossip.”

  “It’s Extreme Lavender. Do you want a coffee?” I said.

  “Just a water, please, honey. It’s very strong isn’t it, that smell? Do you think it might harm Baby?” She put a concerned hand on her pastel-yellow-clad bump as if preventing it being sullied by the mere mention of harm.

  “Probably,” I muttered.

  “It’s amazing what you’ve done here,” Beth continued, moving on into the living room. “You’ve completely transformed the place: it looks enormous! Why didn’t you ever clean your house properly when I lived with you?”

  I handed her the water. “I seem to remember we were too busy, too drunk, or too hung-over to pick up a duster. Biscuit?”

  “Is it organic?”

  “No,” I said. “It says on the side of the packet that it’s packed with synthetic chemicals that mutate babies’ brains.”

  Beth shot me the look I deserved, eyeballed the biscuit tin with a look of longing but then moved away from it. “It’s a shame that you didn’t finish up the front garden before your interviewing. What happened out there? It reminds of a scene from Terminator.”

  I told her about my crazy session with the garden tools, “It was the same day that I ran over to see you – when you were off to your antenatal class with that big pink ball? Do you remember? Because straight after my gardening session Guy appeared at my garden gate and made the inner fire comment and invited me to join the secret society.”

  “Oh, OK. I remember. Sorry. We had to dash off didn’t we? Anyway, it’s a bit odd that you’ve cleaned up the house fit for royalty but the potential lodgers will still have to walk past that Matterhorn of dead stuff.”

  “But the skip still looks good at the front. So hopefully they’ll just focus on that…”

  “And let’s hope they haven’t read the local newspaper.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Haven’t you heard about the boy beaten up on the A2?”

  “No.” I said, wondering why Babs hadn’t dropped it into a conversation.

  “Well, apparently he wasn’t badly hurt at all but he was tied up around one of the vandalised tree stumps, one of those that were planted along the A2 a few weeks ago. He couldn’t escape – the police had to cut him free.”

  “Oh…” The memory of what Eustace had said at the secret underground meeting came back to me: “God help them and their petty lives.” Surely the beaten-up boy wasn’t connected with the vandalising of the oak trees…

  “There was even a picture of him.” Beth continued. “He was dressed up in an eight year old’s public school uniform apparently, complete with cap and short trousers, so whoever did it was obviously out to humiliate him. And get this, right, his pockets were full of acorns. How weird is that? Do you think it’s a drug thing? Are they making heroin out of acorns do you think?”

  My stomach knotted. “Probably,” I said.

  Oh my God. Had Eustace really ordered a “hit” – or more like a “slap” by the sounds of it – on the yob that snapped down all the oak trees that the Spades had planted? Was it an eye for an eye? Was this a punishment?

  “HEY!” Beth shouted and I leapt. “You’ve got rid of the horned helmets!”

  Glad to be distracted from thoughts I followed her line of sight to the bare wall opposite the window where two horned helmets had once hung. “Not got rid of: just hidden in the loft.” I said. “I thought they might freak out any prospective lodgers.”

  “Good plan, Eds. And the drinking horns?”

  “Loft.”

  “Runic inscribed telephone?”

  “That went years ago! Don’t you remember you broke it that night we had the James Bond party? The number three stopped working so we could only phone the pizza place in New Cross, because the one in Brockley had loads of threes in the number?”

  “But you’ve kept these…” Beth walked over to the photographs on the wall of a summer seventeen years ago. Me as an eleven-year-old with lank hair and braces on my t
eeth that caught the sun. I was baring my braces at the person holding the camera – dad – and I was dressed in my sheepskin gilet and hessian tunic, with mum behind me, her hands on my shoulders, laughing at something another Viking had said. And the others, who I knew as Auntie Barbara, Auntie Helen, Uncle Peter … all of them looking authentic and – in Shetland in the summer – borderline hypothermic.

  “I did think about putting the photographs away,” I walked over to where Beth was standing and put a hand up to a photo of my parents bent over a giant log, carving their beloved Viking longboat. “But I can’t.”

  “Rightly so, honey.” Beth said, and then laughed as she found the photograph of Auntie Jane and Uncle Henry in full warrior dress demonstrating how to use a shield against the driving Shetland rain. “Sometimes I forget you’re not wholly Leicestershire.” She said. “I mean I know you’ve still kept a bit of the Scottish accent but I don’t really notice it any more – you’re just you … I forget that you had a whole bizarre life before, well, before you moved down to Leicester and down to me.”

  “It wasn’t that bizarre. Mostly, mum and dad were dentists and we lived in Edinburgh. It was just the holidays and weekends we went Viking.”

  Beth moved on to a group photograph taken in front of Ronas Hill on Shetland. “Do you still keep in contact with any of them?”

  “No. Christmas cards: pagan Christmas Cards … you know. Nothing else.”

  “Do you miss—”

  “Yes.”

  “OK!” She laughed and then turned to me and gave me a pregnant hug. “It must be very hard. Still.”

  “It is. Still.” I said, loving the hug more than any single thing in the whole wide world. “It seems such a long time ago. It was a long time ago. Actually it feels like it all happened to another person and so it’s wrong to feel bad about it because it doesn’t affect me. Does that make sense?”

  “No.” Beth said, frowning in concentration. “Well, you’re moving on and I think you’re doing an amazing thing, Eds. I mean – the guerrilla gardening thing is cool and the lodger idea is great. Hey – maybe you’ll be able to afford to leave your job and open that café you always talked about.”

  “Ha! Maybe.” I said, knowing full well that I would always find an excuse to not do that: some things were just too scary to contemplate.

  “Anyway,” Beth sat down on the (sponged and vacuumed) sofa, “I know about Guy coming round and giving you the full Romeo, but what about the meeting itself? How did it go on the night? Tell me everything.”

  So I did. From the first chicken-filled moments of doubt to the chandeliers and silvered mirrors.

  “You are so lucky,” Beth said when I’d finished off my story with Guy walking me home. “I am actually jealous of you! Here you are on the brink of joining a secret society that meets in an abandoned ballroom. And you’ve got your first dig next week. Nervous?”

  “Very.”

  “Well don’t be. It’s so cool! How cool are you going to be?” she grabbed my arm. “Don’t be too cool will you, Edda? You won’t forget me, will you, when you’re out all night with the guerrilla gardening set?”

  “Of course I won’t forget you,” I said, momentarily thrilled that right now Beth was afraid of being the abandoned one. Because, now, I also had something to look forward to.

  “Oh sod it, I’m going in,” Beth said and dived into the biscuit tin. “Oh! Chocolate malted milks! Edda… I can’t remember the last time I had a chocolate malted milk! We used to eat these all the time didn’t we?”

  “Yeah, do you remember when—” but I didn’t get the chance to finish: Beth had burst into tears.

  I wrapped her up in a big hug and held her close, stroking her hair, loving the familiarity of her despite her increasingly unusual shape. I missed my Beth so much.

  “You’re squashing my malted milk,” came the small voice from inside my hug.

  “Oh,” I pulled away. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s the pregnancy,” Beth wiped her eyes and took some deep breaths. “It totally messes with my emotions.” And she started crying again, big fat tears running down her cheeks. And I felt tears on my cheeks too. “I’m just…” she sniffed and nibbled her malted milk, “I’m just sad. Being here. Seeing the house all nice.”

  “I thought you were upset I didn’t clean it like this for you.”

  “Well, that too.” She sniffed. “But I miss this. I miss us. I do.” She shuffled closer and put a hand on my knee. “I know I go on and on about the baby.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “I know. And you’re really good about it. Except for the time when you kept kicking the skirting at Mothercare.”

  “I can’t believe they got so upset about it.”

  Beth took a swig of water. “I’ve never been asked to leave a shop before. Anyway, apart from that you’ve been amazing, listening to me rattle on about motherhood. I’m sorry I’ve not been around much. It must be hard for you. And I do think about you, you know. All the time.”

  “It’s OK. I’m coping OK.” And I told her about Amanda and the divorce theory, which horrified Beth and caused more tears. “We’re not getting divorced!” she wailed. “Don’t ever say that!”

  “But you are moving away. A long way away.”

  “A few miles…”

  “Over an hour!”

  “But I still love you! We’re not getting a divorce, honey. There’s the phone. We can call. Text. You can stay over at mine, anytime. Baby and I could even stay over here, now it’s so clean.” She managed a teary laugh.

  “I know. Of course. And we will! Definitely. But I’m sad that what we had has gone.” I cried onto a chocolate digestive. “And for the first time we’re going different ways and of course we’ll always be in touch— ”

  Beth lunged at me. “Don’t ever think we won’t!”

  “But we won’t have the same sort of things to talk about. I mean – you’re going to want to talk about the baby. And that’s great – but there are lots of things that I won’t know about. And you’ll have new friends who will want to talk about babies.”

  “Yes, but I want to talk about secret societies too. I wish we weren’t moving to Surrey.”

  “But if you don’t move to Surrey then your baby will be stolen and sold in Deptford Market.”

  “Oh don’t be so silly.” She said. “Greenwich market, surely. Anyway, the whole thing is Jack’s doing really. He’s the one who was pushing for us to run off to Surrey. I think South East London always scared him: he’s not hard like us, Eds.”

  “I don’t think you were ever completely sold on South East London, though, were you? Not entirely. But anyway, when I was cleaning I found a load of photographs from uni. Do you want to see them?”

  “Yes!”

  “Will you cry?”

  “Of course. Go get! And bring more biscuits, Eds! Chop chop!”

  I was sitting on the bench in my jumble of an overgrown back garden: as yet untouched by any gardening frenzy. It was ridiculously early on Saturday morning but, to make up for that, it was especially calm and beautiful: for once I didn’t mind that I was up so early. There were no cars or trains rumbling past, the birds were singing and a fox had wandered about down at the bottom of the garden near the railway line without noticing me. It was like my garden but in another world. Even Babs and her boyfriend were silent.

  My legs were tucked up beneath me and, blanket wrapped around me, I was sipping coffee from my favourite Up-Helly-Aa (Shetland, 1994) mug.

  All in all, it wasn’t the worst start to a day.

  But there was a nagging, inescapable wretchedness. Last night had been great. But so sad too. Beth and I had got through all my chocolate biscuits, several photo albums and half a box of tissues. And now I was sitting in my back garden at six in the morning with puffed red eyes and emotionally spent and for the first time in my life nursing a chocolate biscuit hangover. It was almost like old times.

  In a few hours Amanda and h
er pastel pants would be bouncing up the garden path and we would be interviewing forty-two candidates for the top floor bedroom and bathroom. This was the calm before the storm. And it would be a storm: because what was Amanda going to do? a) ask the prospective tenants if they were currently shacked up with anyone and what their star sign was and b) flash her knickers at them? I couldn’t help thinking, now that it was too late to do anything, that Amanda was just a very bad advertisement for what was on offer at 189 Geoffrey Road. Wouldn’t the male candidates get the wrong impression when they saw her? Wouldn’t they be disappointed when they found out that actually Amanda and her pants were not going to be a part of the deal? And would the female candidates leave the house tutting and thinking not my sort of thing thank you very much when they got the inevitable eyeful of knicker? And would I want anyone who thought otherwise living with me?

  I took another sip of coffee.

  It should be Beth who was helping me today, not Amanda. Because Beth knew me better than anyone. She knew what I was like to live with and she knew who would work as a lodger and who wouldn’t. Amanda was only interested in helping me out because she liked the idea of being on a celebrity judging panel.

  “I don’t know why you didn’t ask me to help you out,” Beth had said late last night, as she was bidding me goodnight on my doorstep. “You always say I boss you around and tell you how it is, so I’m going to live up to your expectations now and tell you something: I should be doing this for you, not some random work colleague. Why don’t you tell this Amanda thanks but no thanks and I can come over and get you a nice lodger? Here – give me Amanda’s number and I’ll phone her if you don’t want to do it yourself. It’s the least I can do considering I’m abandoning you so badly. Here – give me her number,” and she had whipped out her mobile.